Best messaging apps for highest customer satisfaction

The way that customers behave is drastically changing. Customers today favor conversational communication from businesses. Additionally, they desire a conversational atmosphere that is as informal and natural as one with friends or family. According to Statista report, there are around 3 billion mobile phone messaging app users worldwide.  A certain figure demonstrates the constantly changing trends in communication. This also reinforces the message that messaging apps are the way of the future for communication between businesses and customers. Furthermore, in order to improve customer communication, an increasing number of companies are now making use of the popularity of the best messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, etc. These apps feel ideal for a range of tasks in customer service, marketing, and e-commerce because they include a number of useful business and customer-centric features.

Additionally, messaging apps have a strong regional presence that helps brands provide excellent customer service. It's fair to say that these apps are taking customer communication to new heights.

In this blog, we'll talk about some of the best messaging apps for businesses, their features, and how they can help with customer-business communication.

Why are messaging apps beneficial to customer service?

Companies are finding that messaging apps are an excellent asset for enhancing customer service through prompt and direct responses. Companies can assist customers at every stage of the customer journey. Also, ensure a smooth flow of communication, and secure the free exchange of ideas with the help of the best messaging apps for businesses.

For communication, businesses often prefer customers messaging apps for a variety of reasons.

Popularity - Select a messaging app that is popular with your target audience. If the app your target customers use regularly, they'll feel at ease using it to request assistance.

Conversations that are interactive and real-time – As messaging apps are better suited for conversational-style interactions, more businesses are using them to connect with their target audience. Additionally, these apps enable real-time conversations between customers and brands.

Wherever, whenever messaging - Users of messaging apps can communicate with businesses at any time and from anywhere. However, customers can receive assistance as and when needed because they have the option and ability to conduct business in that way.

Communication with a human touch – Although artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots are useful for customer service, most customers still prefer to speak to a person for seamless engagement and natural responses. Additionally, messaging apps are incomparable in terms of full human engagement.

Goals - Choose an app that supports your company goals, whether you're looking to expand your customer base or enhance your conversational customer service.

After you've made a short list of potential choices, think about signing up for a free trial or testing the app out with a select group of users. Afterward, the experience will enable you to decide whether the messaging app is a good fit for both you and your customers.

Best messaging apps for businesses

Due to their growing usage and popularity, customer messaging apps currently rule the global app market. There are some excellent messaging apps for customers that will revolutionize communication.

Discover the best messaging apps for customers here to help you choose the ideal app for your company.

1. WhatsApp

The most popularly used business messaging app in the world, WhatsApp is a global leader in most markets. According to a Statista report, with two billion monthly active users, it is a clear choice for businesses to provide customer service.

Many businesses all over the world already use WhatsApp for business communications. WhatsApp provides two options for businesses:

• WhatsApp Business App - the target audience for this app is smaller companies that can serve a niche market with a limited set of features. However, it is possible to create profiles, labels, and away messages as well as use the auto-reply and response template features.
• WhatsApp Business API for enterprise users in specific business areas. The WhatsApp API is a better choice because it enables them to add custom features and integrations. A business can link the API to a variety of solutions and excellent customer service.

Several features for customer service are already included in WhatsApp, including: 

• Automated message - The feature enables the creation of templates for speedy replies and assists in setting up automated welcome and away messages.
• Format options for multimedia - Audio, video, photos, and PDF documents are just a few of the different formats available for sending multimedia messages.
• Shared team inbox - To improve the standard of customer support, your team can analyze conversations, share the inbox, and respond promptly.
• Quick replies - For quick and effective responses, save and repurpose messages you frequently send customers.

2. Facebook Messenger

One of the most reliable messaging apps in the world for customer service is Facebook Messenger. It is popular worldwide and has a user base of 2.77 billion mobile phone messaging app users. 

Facebook Messenger is a feature-rich communication app that some believe will enhance customer service response. Brands can gain from effective automation, live agent support, and handover protocol features to increase customer service productivity. 

Facebook Messenger is a leading platform for customer service because of its many features. These consist of:

• Automated responses - Create automatic response setups for customer messages. These are available for a variety of scenarios, including an away message, an instant reply, or a custom message to address a set of frequently asked questions.
• Greetings - Companies can configure a personalized welcome message to appear when a customer initiates a conversation with the business page. It can be anything you want it to be, and it gives customers information even before they type anything in.
• Live agent integration - Companies can provide customers with an experience that is a mix of automation and personal touch, thanks to this feature.
• Follow-ups & reminders for scheduling appointments - Businesses can use messenger to send customers automatic follow-ups and reminders while integrating Facebook's appointment booking feature.
• Analytics - Use the Messaging Insights API to monitor messaging performance, including how many people blocked you and how many conversations you had.

3. Telegram

The popular messaging app Telegram has a strong reputation for security and privacy. Over 550 million people use the customer app Telegram each month. Through sharing and exchanging messages, photos, videos, stickers, and files, businesses can communicate with their customers. The "secret chat mode," which completely encrypts conversations from start to finish, is the main feature. 

While Telegram does not support the creation of business accounts, it does provide a few customer support options, such as:

• Chatbots – Through Telegram bots that can be created on the platform itself, businesses can automate their marketing and customer service
• Channels or groups – Telegram does not impose any restrictions on the largest group size, in comparison to other messaging apps. This function may help in easily achieving community and marketing objectives.

4. Viber

Another popular customer messaging app is Viber. It's regarded as the safest messaging and calling app and is free, simple, and quick.

It continues to be a top choice for businesses for customer service communication thanks to its 1.17 billion registered users worldwide and end-to-end message encryption.

Through video calls, messaging, and chatbots, the app enables businesses to interact with their customers. Viber can be used by businesses to send ad campaigns and start direct conversations with customers. Generally, as a multi-platform app, chats are always synced across the selected devices, whether mobile, tablet, or desktop.

There are some practical features in Viber that can be used for customer service. They consist of:

• Delete and edit messages - Correct typos and other errors in chat while quickly deleting sent messages.
• Viber bot - Businesses can set up a chatbot for Viber to provide excellent one-on-one customer support. They can also designate these bots to engage with customers and answer their frequently asked questions.
• Establish a community - Any company can create and join a community and use it to provide customer support in addition to sharing ideas about products and services.
• Stickers & GIFs - In order to express themselves perfectly and to personalize customer response, brands can make stickers and GIFs.

Related article: How Viber business messages increase customer engagement?

5. Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for customer service for a number of reasons. It's an open platform which enables companies to connect with a huge audience of potential customers. Second, because it's available 24/7, customers can contact businesses whenever they want. And lastly, it is simple to use. Furthermore, you can easily switch conversations from a public to a private inbox, respond to a customer's tweet, and provide your audience with useful resources.

The most popular app Twitter has  330 million monthly active users. Customers like using Twitter to communicate with companies. According to Twitter research,  64% of users believe that businesses that have a specific support handle go above and beyond for their customers. 

Twitter already has a number of features for customer service. They consist of:

• Move a public Tweet quickly into a private conversation - Make sure your tweet has a "send a private message" button for quick customer service.
• Obtain customer feedback - To gather feedback on the customer support experience, make use of Twitter's Request Customer Feedback feature.
• Encourage customers to strike up a conversation. - Use the conversation buttons feature, which works with both video and image ads, to engage with your audience. Customers can contact you more readily and easily as a result.

6. Line

Games, group chats, and personal timelines make Line one of the best messaging apps choice for social engagement with 84 million monthly active users. It is widely used in Asia, particularly in Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan.

The app is regarded as a great messaging and video chat tool. Businesses can use the official accounts it provides to interact with customers and expand their reach. 

Businesses can connect with customers and take advantage of the best messaging apps with a variety of features provided by the Line messenger app. Among these qualities are:

Companies can communicate with customers more directly, advertise events and activities related to their businesses, and post significant updates thanks to LINE's Official accounts. Customers can type in your business name and find you on the app if you have a Premium or Verified account.

• Automated responses - The automated responses function on Line is fantastic because it enables businesses to set up particular keywords and have them activated in response to pertinent customer inquiries.
• Stickers - Companies can design their own character and brand stickers to market themselves and provide tailored responses to customer inquiries. For increasing customer response, animated and sound stickers can also be made.
• Away message - Businesses can program away messages to go off during off-peak customer response times.
• Greeting message - In addition, Line provides a default welcome message that appears when users access your Line account.

7. Threema 

Switzerland's messenger Threema is designed for security and data privacy with 11 million users. Its extensive encryption distinguishes it from competing for messaging app, in addition to messages and calls, it also encrypts group chats, media files, and even status updates. 

You can therefore use the channel completely anonymously. Additionally, your information won't be shared with outside parties because Threema is not supported by advertising.

It is therefore the best option for all business communications, especially for hiring, customer service, and internal customer service.

Here are some useful features that can be applied to customer service.. They include:

• Effective user management and administration - Threema Work's management cockpit is its foundation. Here, you specify how your staff members may use the Threema Work app. Whether employees use personal or work devices (BYOD) makes no difference.
• Distribution of targeted information - With Threema Broadcast, you can reach the entire staff, pick only certain departments, and, if necessary, include external recipients as well. Multiple channels are available from Threema Broadcast: feeds (messenger newsletter), distribution lists, interactive chatbots, and centrally managed group chats.
• Automation and integration into third-party software - To automatically send, receive, and process Threema messages, integrate Threema Work into your own software. Consider this: process automation, alerting, two-factor authentication, password exchange, forwarding of encrypted emails, and ending payslips.

8. Live Website Messenger

A website messenger is a potent app for real-time, personalized conversation with visitors. High-quality customer service is provided via the website with the aid of live chat messenger. You can provide a better customer experience with proactive and contextual communication.

Adding chat to your website is possible with Website Messenger. As well as messages from other messaging apps you've connected, messages that your customers send you from there also arrive in your Userlike Message Center. From this point, using specific support and sales features, your support team can respond to them.

Businesses can use visual engagement tools to engage customers through website messenger. By texting a link to a product or sharing a screen to expand customer support, a messenger app for customer service improves engagement.

A variety of built-in features on the website messenger greatly enhance customer support, including:

• Co-browsing - For a quick chat and immediate resolution, it helps in real-time customer collaboration on the website or within a mobile app.
• Live chat - With live chat, you can interact in real-time with customers and visitors and give them great support.
• Video chat - For excellent assistance, customers can receive personalized voice and video chat conversations with real people.
• Chatbots - Use a customer service chatbot to interact with your visitors 24×7 and respond to their frequent questions.

Improve customer service value with messaging apps

The entire environment of customer and business communication has changed as a result of messaging apps. They not only provide excellent customer service, but they also fill in the gaps that were previously caused by the absence of proactive support channels. 

It's now time to choose the best messaging app. Once you've chosen an app, it's time to leverage the efficiency and usability of these apps to offer quick support to your customers.

Want to take things a step further? Connect your messaging app to a Live customer experience platform. Our software solution helps companies worldwide grow their profitability. Also, enabling their customers to engage actively with their brand. 

If that encouraged your interest, just sign up for a free trial today.

Learn more about how the Live product family can help you support and improve your customer experience strategy.

Learn more about how the Live product family can help you support and improve your customer experience strategy.